This past Saturday, my city shut down a loop of streets to traffic and opened them up to walkers, runners, and bikers. I happen to live near that loop, so it was easy to head out and join the fun. What a turnout! I’ve never seen so many cyclists in one place before. It was a lot of fun walking directly on some of the major thoroughfares in our city :) Why didn’t I join the cyclists? I’ve told this tale of woe before, but I don’t ride bikes anymore ever since my bike was stolen out of my garage. I take it as a bad omen!

Writing Updates

As mentioned last month, I’m “taking it from the top” and reworking the draft of Book 3 from the first chapter onward. More needs to be rewritten from scratch than anticipated—this always happens, LOL—but it’s been going pretty quick so far. My insane stretch goal was to complete one scene every day. That’s occasionally feasible when I only have a few tweaks to make to a scene; it’s totally infeasible when writing the whole thing over. One chapter a week is a more realistic target, but even then, that’s only true of short chapters. It looks like, at my most productive, I’m able to polish off around 3,000 words of material. That’s about as long as my shortest chapters; longer chapters can climb into the 6-8,000 word range.

At any rate, 4 chapters are now done, and the fifth is mostly there. At this rate, I may be able to finish the draft by mid-November. However, I anticipate a lot more from-scratch rewriting than I’d once hoped, so that will likely push things back.

Current Goals

Well-rounded Latin practice. Studying vocabulary flashcards daily, textbook work and conjugation/declension practice most days, listening to a podcast episode and writing a response to it once a week. I still don’t understand everything in the podcast, but I’m surprised at how much I do understand. Maybe I’ll be good enough for that full-immersion retreat next year after all (if I’m brave enough to apply)!

Listening to German. A couple times a week, I’ll do an audio lesson, review the vocab, and read transcripts out loud. Happily, I’m at the point with German where I can read something out loud and understand what I’m reading/saying at the same time. Back in grade/high school, I could be asked to read something aloud to the class, and when the teacher asked me what it was about afterward, I’d be like, “I don’t know.” ;)

I’m not sure yet what else I might work on …! :) My brain’s been steeping in a lot of creative stews lately; I haven’t had much chance to think about IRL stuff.

That’s all for now! Hope you’re also having a good summer so far!